Neko Health – co-founded by the boss of Spotify – is the latest in a wave of companies offering controversial high-tech MOTs. But some doctors warn they may increase health inequities and add to NHS workload.
A new high-tech screening clinic co-founded by the boss of Spotify hopes to revolutionise healthcare by picking up signs of disease long before there are any symptoms.
Neko Health uses high resolution cameras, lasers and radar to capture millions of data points around the body, checking for problems that could become serious and even life-threatening in future.
It’s the latest in a wave of companies offering controversial high-tech MOTs. Some doctors warn they may increase health inequities and add to NHS workload by referring people with potentially insignificant findings.
Daniel Ek – the chief executive of the music streaming service – and his partner Hjalmar Nilsonne want to engage with the debate.
In one of the clinic’s softly-lit scanning rooms, Hjalmar tells me that healthcare has traditionally been about treating symptoms – “reactive”, as he calls it.
“We have to find a way to become more proactive, more preventative, to help people stay healthy longer,” he says.
“Instead of giving them medicine, give them long-term health.”
Neko Health’s first clinic outside its hometown of Stockholm, Sweden, is a world away from the busy London shopping street that it lies beneath.
It looks like something straight out of sci-fi.
Step inside and nine cameras – HD, 3D and thermal – take more than 2,000 images to build a high-resolution map of every mole, freckle and blemish on your skin.
If you return for annual checks it allows the clinic to track changes in size, pigmentation and other warning signs of skin cancer.
Next to the booth there’s more tech that could easily have been wielded by Star Trek’s Dr McCoy on his starship crewmates.
